Jonathan Turley: Obama is Not a Dictator, But...

Turley avoids calling him a dictator and in fact says he's not.

But...

The United States is at a constitutional tipping point: The rise of an uber presidency unchecked by the other two branches.

This massive shift of authority threatens the stability and functionality of our tripartite system of checks and balances....

James Madison fashioned a government of three bodies locked in a synchronous orbit by their countervailing powers. The system of separation of powers was not created to protect the authority of each branch for its own sake. Rather, it is the primary protection of individual rights because it prevents the concentration of power in any one branch. In this sense, Obama is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he has become the very danger that separation of powers was designed to avoid.

The suspension of a portion of the ACA is only the latest such action related to the healthcare law...

Not even the power of the purse, which belongs exclusively to Congress, is sufficient to deter the White House. The Obama administration took $454 million from a fund established to help prevent illness and put the money instead toward paying for the federal health insurance exchange. Even leading Democratic members denounced this as "a violation of both the letter and spirit of this landmark law."

Meanwhile, Peggy Noonan questions whether Obamcare is even a "law" anymore.

@charlescwcooke summed this up a while back on the podcast: It's not a law. It might have been passed in a law-like form, but it has been "interpreted" by Obama to not be a law at all.

It is simply an Enabling Act, a block grant of legislative authority to the executive on anything in the category of "health care."

This, of course, is illegal, and unconstitutional. Even if Congress wished to give their powers to the Executive, it would be illegal for them to do so, and the Supreme Court would call it illegal.

And yet here the President simply asserts that Congress has handed him his powers, and only a brave few say anything about it at all.

posted by Ace at 05:53 PM

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